26/11 Second Anniversary Of Mumbai Terror Attack

Today is the 26/11 anniversary and it’s a two year since our great India found itself caught pants down. Life goes on. And the second anniversary of 26/11 is just that to everybody who did not lose somebody in the terror attack on the Mumbai...a date.

The 26/11 attacks changed not just our Mumbai but the our entire nation. People were shocked at the hardheartedness of the terror strikes, which exposed the dodges in the our country's security apparatus..

The whole world watched in bewilderment as Indian television provided an embarrassing, 24/7 coverage of the country's defenselessness. Less than a dozen terrorists brought the our mother India to a virtual standstill for 3 days. While we all sat glued to our television sets, government agencies acted like a bunch of keystone cops.

To recall the horror of that night when you thanked your God that your loved ones and you were not wining and dining at the Taj or Oberoi, nor catching a beer or a champagne at Leopold, waiting for a train at CST station, delivering a baby at Cama Hospital, when bloody ten armed terrorists sailed in from Pakistan and chopped the soul out of our Mumbai. Nariman House at Colaba, nobody had heard of existed, much less as a pilgrim centre for Jews, until the terrorists killed the harmless and friendly Rabbi and his wife there and orphaned their little son.

But it’s two year since then. And not unless you are the widow Kavita Karkare demanding to know what happened to your husband Hemant’s bullet-proof jacket, the widow Vinita Kamte struggling to discover the dying moments of your husband Ashok, the daughter Vaishali turning down the government compensation for your father Ombale... would you know what 26/11 really means.

Notwithstanding the tributes to the heroes and victims that make this page, the brave words by a regrouped police force that offer hope, the truth is the candles you light on the first anniversary of that dark and deadly day, the black ribbon that you tie in your hands are in memory of those who got killed... and they’re not because they died for us, but because they died instead of us.

Sometimes I wonder, if I am as safe as Kasab is in the Mumbai jail. But I also feel, that it is really stupid of me to think something like that, as in a democratic country like our India this bloody terrorist has got a fair trial, unlike it is in Pakistan. I also understand that it has taken quiet a long time, for the Indian judiciary to punish him and one cannot wait anymore to see this man being hanged. Many of us wonder as to when that day would finally arrive, when justice would be done. As it is said “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Remembering the people who died during the attack & the courageous NSG commandos and Mumbai police who fought bravely to bring the situation under control.

Dont forget, two year after the incidents the masterminds are still free, Kasab is still alive, people who have lost their families are still in pain.

-K Himaanshu Shukla...